Yoder Lumber

Industry: Manufacturing

“Instead of searching for a radio and flagging forklift drivers down, our plant employees can just push a button and the forklift driver arrives within seconds.”

– Tony Yoder, Chief Production & Technology Officer, Yoder Lumber

Profile:

Founded more than 70 years ago, Yoder Lumber is a third-generation, family-owned manufacturer of top-quality Appalachian hardwood products. Yoder Lumber started using the LRS Forklift Staff pagers and Butler XP pagers in 2015 in their Hardwood Components Plant.

Products:

Forklift Staff Pager + Butler XP Pager

Challenge:

“An issue that kept coming up in our Hardwood Components plant was the wait time on the forklifts to move material in and out of machines,” said Tony Yoder.

“We were originally using radios to call on forklift drivers, but they just weren’t the right solution for that task.” The radios created excess chatter on the floor and sometimes drivers couldn’t hear the call.

Solution:

“We decided to explore a paging system, and when we searched online LRS was the first to appear,” said Yoder. “The products were a natural fit.”

Yoder Lumber installed the Butler XP, which when pressed, activates the Forklift pager for a specific driver, delivering them with customized instructions.

Results:

“By saving 1-2 minutes per call, for us that’s an extra 15 minutes of production per day, or about 3 percent more production time,” said Yoder.

Business Benefits:

Conclusion:

“By installing pagers, we’ve actually created more standardization in the way we do things at the plant,” said Yoder. “The pagers are affixed to specific work centers, so our employees have ended up keeping materials in the same place and it has helped us to develop lanes for our floor plan. Standardizing traffic is always a good thing for safety.” Leadership at Yoder Lumber view LRS pagers as a part of their ongoing mission to refine and optimize plant processes.